Re: gnews-hows it going?

[Tuomas Lukka <lukka fas harvard edu>]

On Sat, 21 Nov 1998, Daniel Veillard wrote:
> > Once the system is really up to speed, I'm planning to rewrite a couple
> > of gnome apps as demonstrations of the productivity. Unless someone
> > has some apps they really need in which case I might use those as
> > benchmark cases here.
> 
>   I'm not sure it's the best way to convince people. If you want people
> to switch you need to exhibit new capabilities, like scripting, ease of
> prototyping, integration with application builders (no compile phase),
> etc ... Or new kind of applications difficult to build in a more static
> way, imagination is your friend !

I'm doing that as we speak.

I'm writing a tree-oriented XML editor, the dynamic stuff being the fact
that it will be easy to hook in modules related to the actual meaning
of the XML code. 

For instance, I can go self-referential and write XML code for XGtk
in this XML editor and have a small module that shows e.g. how the
boxes will be packed, another which lets me type stuff in the labels,
and so on. But the important thing is that these modules are quick to write
and easy to write for just about any XML-related task. 

And create buttons with macros related to this XML task, like inserting
a CTree inside a ScrolledWindow by default.

Imaginative enough?  There are so many interesting possibilities it's
hard to think freely enough to get there. For instance, you can write
application processors which take an application and do modifications
that you want on it, e.g. replacing all pixmaps with text, changing
window layout and so on.

But the true strength is the ability to whip up a new application without
effort. For instance, if I want a two-button window that executes some
commands when the buttons are pressed and just sits there, I can make
it:

	<XGtk>
		<TopLevel>
			<VBox>
				<Button text="Make">
					<script>
						system("make");
					</script>
				</Button>
				<Button text="Clean up">
					<script>
						system("make clean");
					</script>
				</Button>
			</VBox>
		</TopLevel>
	</XGtk>

This is a whole application that can be run (currently like

	perl xgtk.pl APP-FILE

) and works. The system("") command is perl code embedded into XML.
The nice thing is that I can easily see the structure
of the application immediately and know how to add a third button
whereas in plain Perl-Gtk (or especially C) I would have to wade through
code to find where to put it. 

The whole thing is also object-oriented so you can create several
instances of various windows easily.

Ok, back to writing the XML editor now ;)

If anyone has any interesting ideas on how to use this, please do
not hesitate to get in touch with me.

	Tuomas